6 Places

The hallway leading up to the gymnasium/stadium is pretty quite at this time in the early afternoon, only a handful of people walking from the weight room or the cardio machines. I step up to the glass separating the hallway from the gym and peer inside. A team of girls (possibly SMCM affiliated) is practicing basketball-shooting techniques. They shoot and then wait for another ball to be passed from a teammate, and this goes on for several cycles. It feels odd looking in through the glass, the lights are not all the way turned on inside, and it gives a “hidden” quality to the team and the gym as a whole.

After leaving the Arc I follow the same path we walked during class and the next stop is the shoe tree. Since it is still fairly early in the morning I am not surprised that I do not see much activity at this spot. Now that I realized that I would not be seeing anyone “interacting” with the tree, the whole spot seems sort of empty and forgotten. However, that does not mean that the tree seems any less important, if anything the shoe tree has the feeling that it is just waiting for the next student to visit. The shoe tree, to me at least, is a spot that should be visited latter in the day, it seems more important then.

Following the path behind Dorchester, I walk down past St. John’s pond and arrive at the Campus Center. Specifically I walk into the café area in-between the Daily Grind and the Campus Store. There is a group of people sitting at a table talking about what’s playing on the TV and at the bar is a man reading a book. Even though this looks to be one of the most casual places on campus there is an air of seriousness about the place. As if this is the place that some people come to power through stressful assignments, but at the same time people come here for a light atmosphere. I guess the café is the best of both worlds at St. Mary’s; people walk through on a daily basis but some take the time to sit and just be in the moment.

The next location is the old coffee house in Historic St. Mary’s. Unlike at the Daily Grind, there is no one getting coffee here (at least when I visited). The building is a shell of what was once a major point of interest, one where the original inhabitants of Maryland would talk and share stories, but not anymore, it’s just a relic now. Since I can not see the Coffee House in it’s original state, I can only guess that it was something similar to the Daily Grind; the Coffee House probably held plenty of people and everyone most likely would have enjoyed being there. But as I look in through the windows I can only imagine how important it was and I can only imagine what someone 200 years from now will think of how important the Daily Grind was.

I then walk through Historic and the Trinity Church graveyard and arrive at the Justin Bates memorial marker. It so strange to think that in all the times that I walked past this marker last year to go to the Point, I never once stopped to look at the marker. But now that I am, the whole area seems so much more…fragile. This marker is a place for reflection, remembrance and appreciation of what is around me. The bench and the Marker with Justin’s name on it are both very simple, but they speak for all the years between Justin Bates’ death and now. This spot stands in sharp contrast to the hustle and bustle of the other locations.

Finally I walk back through the graveyard, hop the same fence I did when the class visited these locations, and arrive at the doors of St. Mary’s Hall. If anything this is sort of an awkward last stop, I have never felt much connection or feeling for St. Mary’s Hall, I only know that it is used for visiting comedians and other musical performances. The hall was once a place of learning and now is a place of performance, which I suppose really is a form of learning, just much different from the classical sense. From the outside entrance to the hall I can see people out in kayaks on the river and I get the feeling that this is the perfect place for St. Mary’s Hall, one where a place of learning is fully greeted by the natural world outside.